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How many female entrepreneurs, bankers, and industrialists from the past can you name? You could be forgiven for thinking that, until relatively recently, there were none at all. Women are commonly assumed to have spent most of history as housewives. But in my new book, Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power, I present a revised economic history of the worldone that places women at the heart of the development of the global economy. Here are just five of the (many) ways that women have powered the global economy from the Stone Age to the present day. 1. Creators of global money Before electronic payments, banknotes, and silver coins, it was clothwoven by womenthat was the most popular form of currency. It was lightweight, nonperishable, and easier to judge in terms of quality than a lump of precious metal. Cloth therefore underpinned the first trade boom in history, connecting economiesand peopleacross the world during the Bronze Age. Four thousand years ago, it was packaged up into the side packs of donkeys that journeyed across the peaks and plains of Eurasia in the quest for tin. When mixed with copper, this tin created a far harder and more workable metalbronzedriving one of earliest economic revolutions in human history (akin to the steam engine, electricity, and even AI today). By providing the cloth that paid for tin, women were at the heart of the economic revolution. 2. Builders of Ancient cities While ancient Athens might have been the birthplace of democracyand the home of many a great playwright, philosopher, and poetit was ancient Rome that had the far more successful economy. And this was in large part because the Romans had a far more favorable attitude to both business and to women. Not only did Roman women own ships and shopsand trade their wine and olive oil across the Mediterraneanthey also helped to build the ancient city itself. A third of the clay beds that supplied the capitals bricks were owned by women and, in percentage terms, the proportion of Roman plumbers who were women was four times that of the U.S. today. 3. Merchants of International Trade As Europe disintegrated after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Middle East was moving in the opposite direction, in no small part thanks to a businesswoman called Khadija. In the sixth century, Khadija was one of the wealthiest merchants operating out of the oasis town of Mecca. Her trading caravana fleet of pack animalsmoved cloth, leather, and animal skins through the deserts of Arabia and, to help look after it, she employed a young man by the name of Muhammad, who was known for his honesty and hard work. After developing a business relationship, Khadija proposed marriage to the Prophet-to-be. Not only was Khadijas financial support crucial to the subsequent spread of Islam, but the couples background in business meant that trade and merchant activity were revered within the early Islamic Empire, fuelling a Golden Age that made the Middle East the richest part of the world in the eighth to the eleventh centuries. 4. Technological Innovators From Henry Ford to Bill Gates, men are typically seen as the heroic geniuses who drove the technological innovations that have allowed our economies to prosper. However, in preindustrial China, women led the way in innovation, and no more so than Huang Dao Po. Aged only 10, Dao Po ran away from home to escape an arranged marriage, boarding a boat for Hainan Island, where she met the women spinners and weavers of the Li people who took her under their wing and taught her the secrets of their trade. Later returning to her hometown of Songjiang (near Shanghai), she set up a cotton cloth-making business and passed on her knowledge of the most advanced spinning and weaving techniques to local women. The technologies she introduced included a treadle-operated spinning wheel that enabled multiple threads to be spun at the same time, which more than quadrupled productivity and so made China the centre of global cloth production. 5. Inventors of consumer banking By the eighteenth century, Europe was catching up with China and London was in the midst of a financial revolution. But while men were serving the financial needs of the wealthy elite, women had their eyes on a much wider market. In 1798, a woman by the name of Priscilla Wakefield set up Englands first bank for women and children. Rather than operating her bank from plush offices, she simply set up a desk at a local school, where she opened her ledger to deposits as small as a penny. Driven by the belief that pennies make pounds, and that saving was the best form of self-help, Wakefield saw banking not just as a form of business but also as a means of helping people to help themselves. Like Wakefield in England, Maggie L. Walker extended banking services to underserved groups in America. The daughter of a former slave, Walker was troubled by the way in which banks ignored the needs of African Americans and so rolled up her sleeves to fill the gaping hole. In 1903, she set up St. Lukes Penny Savings Bank, making her the first American woman to charter a bank. Between them, Wakefield and Walker made banking accessible to millions of ordinary peopleand so created the modern consumer banking world.Wherever you look across history, women have supercharged the most successful economies of their day, including in the Bronze Age, the Roman world, the Islamic Empire and preindustrial China. It was also by embracing womens economic freedom that the West was able to transition from poverty to prosperity and deliver the standards of living that we enjoy today. And it is by maintaining itrather than beating a retreatthat we can avoid the types of civilizational collapses suffered by our predecessors.
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E-Commerce
We know that people with ADHD often approach work differently than might a neurotypical person. And while ADHD can manifest in traits like impulsivity and being easily distracted, the condition is also associated with many desirable qualitiesincluding, it seems, incredible creativity. Thats the upshot of new research recently presented at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Congress in Amsterdam. Researchers conducted a pair of studies involving 750 participants, finding that those with ADHD may experience more frequent episodes of mind-wandering, and that that, in turn, could lead to greater creative thinking abilities. “Previous research pointed to mind-wandering as a possible factor linking ADHD and creativity, but until now no study has directly examined this connection,” one of the investigators, Han Fang, said in a statement. “We found that people with more ADHD traits, such as lack of attention, hyperactivity, or impulsivity scored higher on creative achievements in both studies,” Fang said. There are two different kinds of mind-wanderingspontaneous and deliberate. Those who deliberately allowed their minds to wander showcased greater creativity, Fang said. “This suggests that mind-wandering may be an underlying factor connecting ADHD and creativity,” he added. The many sides of ADHD The findings add to other evidence pointing to some of the more beneficial seeming traits of ADHD, including that certain ADHD traits like impulsivity or a tendency to hyperfocus can lead to greater creativity. For example, a 2021 study found that people with a common form of ADHD known as combined type ADHD were more creative than people with other forms of the condition. What those findings suggested was that higher degrees of ADHD symptoms were associated with greater creativity. Experts say the latest findings have the potential to help transform ADHD treatment, but more research is needed to confirm the results. “For treatment, ADHD-tailored mindfulness-based interventions that seek to decrease spontaneous mind-wandering or transform it into more deliberate forms may reduce functional impairments and enhance treatment outcomes,” Fang said.
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E-Commerce
After a number of big announcements this week, its hip to be Square. Square announced several upgrades and features to its platform this week, including an expansion of tools for restaurant owners and operators, new intelligence capabilities under its Square AI suite, and the unveiling of Square Bitcoin, allowing platform users to conduct transactions in Bitcoin. As a cherry on top, Cash App, a sister company to Square under its parent firm, Block, also announced Neighborhoods, a feature that connects customers with local businesses, creating local networks in which customers can place orders and accumulate rewards points to spend with nearby businesses, and helps those businesses create followings and marketing channels all within Cash App itself. Squares announcements, made by company leaders at an event in New York City on Wednesday, made one thing fairly clear: Square has its sights set on being much more than a two-dimensional point-of-sale vendor. It wants to provide small businesses with an entire suite of technology and tools that can help those small businesses compete with much larger companies with vast resources, especially in the food and beverage space. Squares focus on food and beverage Lindsey Irvine, Squares chief marketing officer, tells Fast Company that Squares focus on the food and beverage industry, particularly as it relates to these recent announcements, is founded in the fact that restaurantsbe they diners, coffee shops, or full-service sit-down steakhousesare the lifeblood of many communities. One thing we looked at from the data standpoint, and a unique differentiator for Square, is that were the only solution that operates in every type of business in a given neighborhood, she says. And if you dig in, restaurants have the most vibrancy. That is, restaurants tend to see more foot traffic and conduct more transactions than most other types of businesses. So, theres a lot of data to be analyzed, and a lot of potential problems for business owners to solve. Accordingly, We want to plant a flag and build a platform for restaurants. Restaurants, Irvine says, are also fairly complicated to run, so creating a platform with restaurants in mind could be adopted by other business types with relative ease, which also made it an easy place for Square to start when developing its new tools and features. While Square is rolling out several new tools, Irvine says she thinks that its Order Guide, a tool that leverages AI to help restaurant owners dig into their revenue and costs and look for alternative suppliers, among other things, is likely the most exciting. I think, on a practical level, the Order Guide and the potential cost savings are big, she says. This is what restaurant owners talk about every day: increasing prices. The only option they have to find savings is to go through their list, vendor by vendor. There was no solution, she adds. But weve done that for them. At the event on Wednesday, restaurant owners on-handwhich included Henry Laporte, the co-owner of the three-month-old French Dip restaurant Salt Hanks, and Jake Dell, the fifth-generation owner of Katzs Deli, a 137-year-old New York City institutionshared their enthusiasm about the new tools, including the Order Guide. That could be big for us, Laporte said on stage during a panel discussion about the new tools. The price of beef has gone up 25% over the past month, he added, saying that it would be big if tools like Order Guide could help him look for alternative suppliers. Squaring up to whats ahead Looking ahead, Irvine says that Square plans to hold more events like the one in New Yorkwhich was the second Releases event the company has ever held. She envisions there being two per year, one on each U.S. coast, and perhaps even international events. The goal, she says, is to make Squares presence felt nationwide, especially on a neighborhood level, where some of Squares competitors may feel more distant. When her team is on the ground, speaking with business owners, theres a wild amount of pent-up demand for some of the features that Square is rolling out, Irvine says. People trust us, our POS is their lifeblood, and at the end of the day, were finding ways to help them grow. Were showing up authentically. While that doesnt necessarily mean that every mom-and-pop sandwich shop is going to dive headfirst into the Bitcoin ecosystemand Square Bitcoin is designed for, and only for, Bitcoin transactions, not other types of cryptocurrencyhaving the option to accept it is not something they can get through other broad platforms. To finish off the event, Square CEO Jack Dorsey, as a part of a fireside chat with Randy Garutti, the former CEO of Shake Shack and current board member for Block, said that Block itself is, in a way, coming full-circle back to its roots as it renews its focus on helping small businesses generate on-the-ground insights and beef up their point-of-sale platforms. Squares announcements, he says, help position Square and Block as a go-to business partner for whats to come. We want to be a company thats 10 steps ahead of a customer’s expectation and desire, Dorsey said. I think were now, finally, getting back to that, which is how we started the company. But Dorsey reiterates that even Squares early plans and goals underwent big revisions as he and others learned more about what its customer actually needed, rather than what they wanted to create for them. That, again, has resulted in some of the new feature and tool rollouts. There was no grand vision early on, Dorsey said. You have to feel it. You have to discover. Theres no true invention, he added. Being able to adapt, Dorsey said, is whats given Square the ability to come as far as it has. Those are the things that really break the company’s potential open. Theyre unexpected, he said. Those unexpected things are what gives you lasting power.
Category:
E-Commerce
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